Flight Attendant Tips on Beating Jet Lag

It’s thrilling to be able to, say, take off to Thailand for an impromptu vacation. However, these trips take a toll. Indeed, jet lag can leave you in such a state that you aren’t savoring the gorgeous beaches so much as stumbling through the day and awake all night. This is when it helps to turn to people who, by the very nature of their work, have to figure out how to deal with jet lag as efficiently as possible. Thrillist‘s Matt Meltzer reached out to flight attendants for their expertise. Here are some of the crucial tips.

Put your legs up. The first chance you get, lie down and elevate your legs against a wall for five to 10 minutes. It’s a quick way to drain fluid from your legs. (In general, elevating your legs is cited as a way to improve circulation.)

Stay up. We all know we should do this, but when you finally reach the hotel that bed looks so inviting. Respect your sleep cycle and stick it out until a normal bedtime.

Get up. So you lasted until a respectable hour. As a reward, why not let yourself sleep for a solid 24 hours or so? No. Get up as you normally would and get adjusted.

Clean up. Specifically, flush out your nose with saline solution. It won’t necessarily keep you from catching whatever the passenger next to you had, but it flushes out the dust and germs that accumulated during the flight.

Rip it up. You’re forcing yourself to stay awake anyway: get some exercise, ideally outdoors. It will make staying awake easier and help you sleep more soundly.

And we’ll add to this list: drink up (sadly, just water). Being on a flight is dehydrating, so get enough H2O to keep yourself in the clear.